Back to the old balls

(I recently joined this site as a contributor, so you'll be seeing the occasional basketball opinion here. )

The NBA -- David Stern, that is -- told the league's players that they would get the old leather balls back starting January 1st.

Reaction was muted snark. Mavs owner Mark Cuban:

"They scrapped it?" Cuban said in an e-mail. "I guess if I have to hear about a final decision in the media that says it all. I guess I missed the class where they were discussing the pros and cons of the new ball and the impact of making a change midseason."

Celtics coach Doc Rivers:

"It's just like the park. That's what it's going to feel like. Whoever brings the ball on Jan. 1, that's the one we're going to play with."

Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy:

"When they told me they were going back to the old ball, I said I've never brought this point up, but I know this: if you bounce it straight down, that thing will not come up in a straight line. You have to play like you're playing at the old Boston Garden, looking for those dead bounces. You just have to be sure you have to keep the ball close to the ground."

Lebron James:

"I'm very excited. You see my smile, right? If we've got practice tomorrow, I'll be shooting with that (old) ball tomorrow."

Tim Duncan:

"They should have done a little more testing the first time so we wouldn't have had to go through this. Hopefully, they have corrected their mistake, and everything will be good."

Paul Pierce:

"The players, it was just tough on them because I think (the NBA) kind of just sprung the ball on the players instead of giving them fair warning."

Pierce was the player's representative when the new ball was introduced last summer. At that time he predicted turnovers would be down this season because of the new ball. They have been, but that couldn't outweigh things like the fact that it gets slippery when wet, sticks to the rim, lodges between the rim and backboard more frequently and actually dries out players' hands to the point they suffer cuts on their fingers.

PETA, I suspect, will be pissed by this flip-flop.

A touch of bloggerhea

-- Two new blogs of special note: Bonddad has his own place, and so does the esteemed former Majority Leader of the US House of Representatives, Tom DeLay. Well, he did for awhile anyway. Thanks to the magic of the Google you can still read it, including all 100+ comments he received before someone shut it down for him.

-- Gasoline prices continue to rise during the holiday season, baffling "experts". The Chronic also weighs in to tell us it's no big deal (yet, they helpfully caution).

-- The Big Dog came to San Antone yesterday for Ciro. B and B has pictures and Muse has video. Election Day for TX-23 is tomorrow.

-- The Houston Texans 2006 draft theory was disproved in the laboratory yesterday. Twice. I would have paid the value of a luxury box for the season just to see the look on Bob McNair's face when VY scored the game-winning touchdown.

Ten more years of in-his-face just like yesterday. Maybe twelve, maybe fifteen.

-- An iconic piece of Houston's East End gets ready for a little makeover. And also underground downtown, and in the Village as well.

-- Smoke-filled rooms in Washington die hard (if they die at all).

-- Financial wisdom I may be beating Bonddad to: consider turning your IRA into a Roth. Really.

-- Some good Sunday Funnies here.

Off we go

up into the wild black yonder ...

Get up early tomorrow, go outside, look at the planets

Stargazers will get a rare triple planetary treat this weekend with Jupiter, Mercury and Mars appearing to nestle together in the pre-dawn skies. About 45 minutes before dawn on Sunday those three planets will be so close that the average person's thumb can obscure all three from view.

They will be almost as close together on Saturday and Monday, but Sunday they will be within one degree of each other in the sky. Three planets haven't been that close since 1925, said Miami Space Transit Planetarium director Jack Horkheimer.

And it won't happen again until 2053, he said.

"Jupiter will be very bright and it will look like it has two bright lights next to it, and they won't twinkle because they're planets," said Horkheimer, host of the television show Star Gazer. "This is the kind of an event that turns young children into Carl Sagans."

...

The way to find the planets, which will be low on the east-southeast horizon, is to hold your arm straight out, with your hand in a fist and the pinky at the bottom. Halfway up your fist is how high the planets will appear above the horizon, Nichols said.

Jupiter will be white, Mercury pinkish and Mars butterscotch-colored.

"It is a lovely demonstration of the celestial ballet that goes on around us, day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium," said Horkheimer. "When I look at something like this, I realize that all the powers on Earth, all the emperors, all the money, cannot change it one iota. We are observers, but the wonderful part of that is that we are the only species on this planet that can observe it and understand it."

Moneyshot Quotes of the Week

"I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way being blown up by the same bombs day after day."

"That is absurd. It may even be criminal."

-- Gordon Smith, the latest Republican Senator to get off the Kool-Aid

"It's bad in Iraq. That help?" (heh-heh-heh)

-- Bush, when asked by a British reporter if he was 'still in denial about how bad things are in Iraq'

"It shocked me that (the Astros) would not continue to go up, when the Yankees continued to push and push and pursue and they (the Astros) really didn't do much."

-- Andy Pettitte, pissing and moaning about his $16 million contract with the New York Yankees. The Houston Astros offered him $12 million.

"The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion."

-- Texas comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn

"You have these cheap shots coming at you, but you still need to move forward. Obviously, when people are spreading falsehoods and lying about your character and who you are, it's much more aggravating. ... If you lose by one point in a game, you can look back on every single play of the game ... (one) can say, 'gosh darn, if we only had made that block, if we only didn't jump off-sides, if we only had recovered that fumble, if we hadn't thrown that interception. If the referees didn't screw us on that play.' "

-- former Senator George Allen of Virginia, on why he lost

"I just didn't feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically. He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes."

-- Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, after an Oval Office meeting

"Nope, nobody sang 'Kumbaya'."

-- outgoing UN ambassador John Bolton, asked about a 'healing process' with outgoing UN Sec.-Gen. Kofi Annan at a White House dinner attended by both

Pettitte, Astros playing chicken

This is the most recent news I can find on the 'will he or won't he'/'here or there' cat-and-mouse being played by Andy Pettitte and the Astros:

The Yankees have opened by offering Pettitte $15 million. They've also told him they'll improve that, perhaps to $17 million, which would top the $16.5 million he made in 2006. The Yankees also said they'll give Pettitte a second year if he so desires. The Astros are way behind financially, at $12 million (and one season).

Even so, interested parties have seen the competition as a 50-50 proposition.

"Certainly, we have a geographical edge,'' Astros general manager Tim Pupura said. "And certainly, you have to expect the Yankees to have a financial edge.''

The author, Jon Heyman of SI.com, continues ...

Feeling slightly uncertain about which team Pettitte will choose, the Astros went ahead and agreed to a deal Thursday morning to obtain Jon Garland from the White Sox for three young players -- Willy Taveras, Jason Hirsh and Taylor Buchholz -- only to see it fall through when, according to sources, the White Sox became concerned with the health of Buchholz.

We can't forget that Pettitte left the Yankees three years ago feeling somewhat slighted by his own team when it reduced their offer to him from a three-year contract to a two-year contract. So it's reasonable to wonder whether Pettitte felt the least bit slighted at the news that the Astros had a deal for a pitcher to replace him.

And indeed, Garland would have been replacing him. Purpura said it "would have been very difficult'' to employ both Garland and Pettitte and said they will continue to seek a top starter. If they can't resurrect a deal with the White Sox, they will look for another one.

"We have to pursue other options,'' Purpura explained. "He's talking to other clubs, and we're talking to other clubs."

I thought the 'Stros did well with the Carlos Lee and Woody Williams signings (even if the market dictates they had to overpay for them) but if they miss Pettitte not over a few million dollars but because he's easily piqued, well ...

... too bad. He started this charade with his Clemens-like shilly-shallying, and now if he has to go back to the Big Apple to work, gee that's too bad for his lovely family in Deer Park.

Make up your mind already, you big redneck.

Update (minutes after this posting): Pettitte is New York-bound.

Andy Pettitte has chosen to re-sign with the New York Yankees, reaching a one-year $16 million deal with a player option for another $16 million in 2008.

If he gets hurt, he won’t take his option.

“I had offered the Astros $14 million and an option,” Randy Hendricks said. “But they wouldn’t take it. Both teams know that if Andy gets hurt, he won’t take the option. The Astros flat turned me down.”

Feingold, Bennett put the ISG on notice

Each in their inimitable way, of course. First, Russ (from Countdown):

The fact is this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report.

Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism. So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows not in the description of what's happened -- that's fairly accurate -- but it shows in the recommendations. It's been called a classic Washington compromise that does not do the job of extricating us from Iraq in a way that we can deal with the issues in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia which are every bit as important as what is happening in Iraq.

This report does not do the job and it's because it was not composed of a real representative group of Americans who believe what the American people showed in the election, which is that it's time for us to have a timetable to bring the troops out of Iraq.

And then Bill:

Who are these commissioners and what is their expertise in Iraq — or even foreign policy? ... The entire report is contemptuous of the military, spoken of as pawns on a chess table, barriers, observers, buffers, and trainers. Never as what they are trained to be: the greatest warriors in the world. Would it have been too much to ask that one general, or even one outspoken believer in the mission from the get-go, be on this commission?

Perhaps the most systemic problem with the report is it didn't tell us how to win; it answered how to get out. The commissioners answered the wrong question, but it was the one they wanted to answer.

In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible.

I think Bennett is jealous because he wasn't picked for the commission. Or maybe he's just having severe slots withdrawal.

Pearl Harbor Day remembrances

Today is the 65th anniversary.

There's no personal connection to the day; my dad shipped out to Pearl (he boarded a train at the old Union Station railway downtown; it's now part of Minute Maid Park) but got there just as the war was ending, so he never saw any action. He spent his enlistment doing the beginning of peacetime maintenance.

The surviving veterans will gather at the USS Arizona memorial for the last time. Most of them don't expect they can attend a 70th, if there is one.

The Arizona had been loaded with millions of gallons of heavy fuel oil the day before it was sunk in the Japanese attack. That oil has leaked slowly out of it ever since. There has long been concern that the deteriorating condition of the rusting ship might suddenly release what remains of its trapped cargo, causing an environmental disaster. People have been studying ways of dealing with, or preventing, that occurrence.

And in Fredericksburg, the hometown of Admiral Nimitz, they will commemorate the anniversary with the usual speeches and 21-gun salutes, but also with a sale of Texas Historical Commission bonds to expand the facilities there.

Kossacks like Edwards, Obama, Clark

... but Gore a lot more, if he would only declare. Almost 16,000 respondents from the progressive netroots voted in the poll that did not include the former vice-president and the three named in the headline finished 28-28-26 respectively; 57% of almost 14,000 made Gore a runaway winner in the poll with his name on the ballot. The three leaders leaked away much of their support to him.

Summary:

... But keep in mind, winning the "blogosphere primary" gets these guys nothing. It's all about activating, energizing, and mobilizing hardcore political junkies to evangelize and work their campaigns.

Let's say, conservatively, that 5 million people read liberal blogs. You get 10 percent of those, you're looking at 500,000 activists working on your behalf. What campaign wouldn't kill for that sort of interest?

The corporate media meme remains, of course, Hillary and Obama. Frankly, I don't think the Democrats can win back the White House with either one of those two at the top of the ticket. My choices today would be Gore, Clark, Edwards -- and not necessarily in that order. Greggie-Poo the Blue Pooch will be shocked, shocked if the ticket in '08 isn't Clinton-Warner.

I think that premise is absolutely hilarious. OTOH, I'll have to vote Green if he's so much as half right.

Update: Kos calls the cattle.

Update II (12/7): And the cattle prod for the Republicans. My take, posted there, is ...

McCain is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It's currently him alone in the first tier.

Second tier: Giuliani, Romney, Brownback.

Hizzoner has star power but is much too moderate to move up. The fundies need someone to rally 'round; my guess is it will be either Mitt or Sam.

Third tier: Hagel, Gingrich, Pataki, Huckabee, Tancredo, Hunter, Thompson.

Hagel is McCain Lite, with the exception of being out front in opposition to Iraq. This still doesn't seem to be the popular thing to do if you're a conservative, however. Gingrich will attract a southern conservative following and can't be discounted. Pataki gets lost among the other nor'easters (and is the blandest of this bunch; makes Frist seem like Elvis). Tancredo has one issue to run on. Hunter, Huckabee and Thompson don't even have that.

Could go nova by just announcing and move into the top tier: Jeb, Condi. Not sure how either can run a campaign of 'change' in 2008. Bush fatigue would ultimately doom either one in the general.

Blogs force Rep. Truitt to blink

The legislation filed by Rep. Vicki Truitt -- summarized here -- has been withdrawn by her.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the story:

Texas bloggers: Retract your claws. Vicki Truitt means you no harm.

The Keller state representative has been public enemy No. 1 for bloggers for the past three weeks because of a bill she pre-filed relating to defamatory comments on Web sites.

It turns out Truitt had meant to file a much narrower bill that was not directed at bloggers. She now plans to enter substitute language in January.

I don't really buy this premise of Ms. Truitt's, but let's continue:

Truitt filed House Bill 129 on Nov. 13, the first day lawmakers could file bills for the legislative session that begins in January. The bill specified that the author of defamatory statements expressed on the Internet would be subject to the same libel limitations as the author of any other statement "in any other written or graphic form."

Outrage on the blogosphere was quick.

Eileen Smith, editor of Austin-based InThePinkTexas.com, ripped into the bill two days later in a post titled "My Other Blog is Yo Mama." The post now appears on the first page of a Google search for "Vicki Truitt."

More than 30 readers commented on the post, many heckling Truitt. Noting that if the bill passed it wouldn't go into effect until September, reader Roaring Gnome suggested, "I think you should dedicate all posts after Sept. 1, 2007 to making fun of Vicki Truitt's absurdly big hair. It would NOT be a false statement, so I think you'd be covered."

More than 10 other blogs ultimately wrote about the bill in the ensuing weeks. Some latched onto the notion that they were free to say whatever they wanted about Truitt until the bill passed.

I didn't think there was nearly the blogswarm we needed on this in order to get the desired response. That Rep. Truitt backed off so quickly suggests she is an avid blog reader and was intimidated by our enormous power.

Or that she doesn't know a blog from Bergdorf Goodman (and is intimidated by our enormous power). Continuing:

Vince Leibowitz of Grand Saline analyzed the bill's wording on his blog CapitolAnnex.com. He suggested that even though Web sites are already subject to libel limitations, the legislation could ultimately strip bloggers of the basic protections against libel charges that traditional media enjoy.

That prediction worried other bloggers, some of whom suggested organizing opposition to the bill.

"This is just another way to silence the little guy/gal," wrote Michael Davis, who blogs at dallasprogress.blogspot.com.

"I blog. You decide. Truitt sues," added a blogger on bayareahouston.blogspot.com.

...

Truitt's legislative director, Dan Sutherland, said that legal advisers had suggested broadening the bill's language to include all defamatory comments, but that stifling bloggers or anyone else on the Internet was never their intention.

"In the conversations I had with legislative counsel, we never talked about blogs," Sutherland said. "Apparently the people who write blogs think it was targeted at them, so we're trying to clarify it."

Sutherland described the blogger reaction to the bill as "amazing" but noted that allowing public comments to help reshape proposed legislation is part of the democratic process.

"It's not unusual for any representative to file something, and once people start reading it, they bring things to our attention they hadn't thought of or got lost in the translation," Sutherland said.

Truitt said she didn't intend the bill to be viewed as a way of silencing free speech on the Web, especially for those writing about public figures.

Once again, I doubt it. Nevertheless:

Smith, of InThePinkTexas.com, expressed surprise that Truitt's broadly worded bill was intended to be about something so specific as identity theft. Regardless, she said the furor over the bill has helped spark a dialogue about how blogs should be treated compared to traditional media.

"It has brought up interesting questions about how legislators are going to view blogs as vehicles of information," Smith said. "It's actually a good discussion platform for everyone to have anyway ... even if it wasn't what she intended."

And there you have it. The blogosphere just gained a little street cred.

2006's Texan of the Year: Blogger Style

... not a Republican (like last year) but also not necessarily a Democrat, either (though they endorsed several of them in the November elections).


It's Carolyn Boyle of Texas Parent PAC.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Texas Parent PAC was founded in 2005 by Boyle, a former public relations executive well-known in the Capitol as an advocate for Texas public schools.

"Carolyn Boyle and Texas Parent PAC proved that you don't have to be a prominent, wealthy donor to make positive changes in the Texas political landscape,” said San Antonio's Matt Glazer, senior writer for Austin-based Burnt Orange Report and founder of Just Another Blog. "Overnight, Parent PAC became the most sought-after endorsement in Texas politics," Glazer continued.

"This election cycle, Carolyn Boyle and Texas Parent PAC showed that soccer moms and PTA dads speak as loud as the James Leiningers and Bob Perrys, and that the folks those guys have been helping get elected all these years aren't doing the job when it comes top public education," said Vince Leibowitz of Grand Saline, publisher of Capitol Annex.

Congratulations to Ms. Boyle and Texas Parent PAC.

Just cleaning out my del.icio.us pages

-- The Times put out their Ten Best list, none of which I have read. I did just complete John Grisham's The Innocent Man, and I think that ought to be on anyone's list.

-- the retail diamond industry is concerned about the effect of the movie "Blood Diamond" on its holiday sales.

-- Greg Abbott doesn't believe that carbon dioxide is harming the planet:

Twelve states are squaring off against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which they say has failed to do its job by refusing to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas.

But in Texas, where the state climatologist says global warming is a pressing concern and scientists say the Gulf Coast could be flooded within the century, the attorney general has joined a smaller coalition of states that sides with the EPA, which says the gas is not a dangerous air pollutant.

The Texas attorney general's office did not even consult the state's environmental agency before signing onto the legal brief submitted to the high court, according to one of the agency's commissioners.

"The State of Texas' intervention in this case wasn't derived from any formal request" from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said Larry Soward, one of three members of the commission. "This agency did not ask the attorney general to intervene in the lawsuit on our behalf, nor have we been involved.

"It's routine or common course for the agency with regulatory authority to be integrally involved. And that hasn't been the case."

I'm going to send the OAG a copy of "Inconvenient Truth" for Christmas. How about you?

-- Wal-Mart has added a new benefit for its long-time employees: if you work there for twenty years, you get a polo shirt.

-- student loan regulation is about to change substantially, to the benefit of students and the detriment of the lenders, who in the most recent cycle gave most of their campaign contributions to two Republicans. One of them was John Boehner, the incoming House minority leader.

-- William Wayne Justice is probably the most valuable Texas jurist of my lifetime. It's not too fantastic to imagine him on the Supreme Court, having been appointed by Clinton in the Nineties and surviving a bruising confirmation, and beating the living daylights out of Fat Tony the Fixer and Slappy Thomas.

What a wonderful world it would be.

-- Christof and Kuffner have previously reported on the Trans-Texas Corridor propaganda campaign already underway. Paul Burka calls the TTC potentially the "the worst public policy fiasco" of his lifetime. Many of the 2006 Democratic statewide candidates campaigned hard against the boondoggle and will likely continue that effort. Other smart, ambitious Democrats might do the same. This is an issue still crying out for organized opposition.

-- Electronic voting machines ought to be tossed into the harbor. Or the lake, or the gulf, or the ocean, or the nearest, deepest, saltiest body of water. That's not my opinion but that of the federal agency that advises the US Election Assistance Commission.

-- all the way from last week, the president-elect of the Christian Coalition resigned when the board refused to allow him to expand the mission of the organization beyond opposing gay marriage and abortion, to include poverty and environmental issues. "That's not our base," they said.